Day 66: Camp Amache, Granada, Colorado
📌APIA Every Day (66) - Camp Amache, also known as the Granada Relocation Center near Granada, Colorado, was the smallest of the ten incarceration camps established under Executive Order 9066. The majority of the incarcerated Japanese Americans came from California, specifically southwest L.A., the Central Valley, and the Northern Coast, including many residents of the Yamato Colony, a farming settlement founded by Issei businessman Kyutaro Abiko. At its peak, the camp housed over 7,300 internees, with more than 10,000 individuals passing through during its operation, covering approximately 10,500 acres. Despite being the smallest, Camp Amache became the tenth largest city in Colorado.
The central section of the camp, surrounded by a barbed wire fence and watchtowers manned by military police, included various facilities for the incarcerated Japanese Americans. The remaining land was dedicated to agriculture, transformed by internees into a productive center for cattle, poultry, and crop farming.
In 1944, some Japanese Americans were granted indefinite leave, and by October 1945, Camp Amache closed. Some families returned to California, particularly from the Yamato farming colonies, while a few settled in the Arkansas River Valley or moved to Denver, with Chicago becoming a key location for resettlement efforts. After closure, most buildings were dismantled, leaving only the monument at the cemetery and a concrete structure built by the Amache Cooperative. The monument commemorates 31 of the 441 Japanese Americans who were drafted into the military and died during the war.
Yearly pilgrimages began in the 1980s, the first occurring in 1975, led by the Denver Central Optimists Club, a civic group with former Amache inmates and their relatives, now known as the Amache Club. They lead the yearly pilgrimage to the camp cemetery every third Saturday of May. The Amache Historical Society, headquartered in Los Angeles and primarily composed of former Amache inmates, is also leading preservation efforts by taking the initiative on Amache reunions. Moreover, local support for preservation came from teachers at the Granada School District, like John Hopper, a high school social studies teacher who organized the Amache Preservation Society. The group maintains a small museum in Granada with a significant collection of objects, documents, and photographs related to the camp.
While the Granada Relocation Center National Historic Site acts introduced in 2006 and 2007 gained no momentum, President Joe Biden signed the Amache National Historic Site Act on March 18, 2022, finally authorizing the site's inclusion in the National Park System. APIAHiP has been supporting the designation of Camp Amache as an official National Park, recently authorized on February 15th of this year.
LEARN MORE
National Park Service: Granada Relocation Center, CO
Smithsonian Magazine: Japanese American Incarceration Camp in Colorado Receives Federal Protection
Amache.org: Amache Preservation Society
Densho Encyclopedia: Amache (Granada)
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